Wednesday Briefing: Biden condemns Hamas

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October 11, 2023

By Justin Porter

Good morning. We’re covering the continuing conflict between Israel and Gaza, and a likely default from a Chinese property developer.

Plus, has culture come to a standstill?

Israeli soldiers yesterday in the village of Kfar Azza, which was attacked by Hamas militants on Saturday. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Israel pummels Gaza as Biden condemns Hamas

Israel said its military had regained control over its border towns yesterday as it continued to hammer Gaza with airstrikes, reducing some buildings to rubble.

President Biden, in a televised address to Americans from the White House, pledged military assistance to Israel, including rockets to replenish its Iron Dome interceptor system. He said that 14 U.S. citizens had been killed, and called Hamas’s actions “pure unadulterated evil.”

Biden added that the U.S. would help provide intelligence to save Hamas-captured hostages, who include American citizens, but did not suggest that U.S. troops would assist directly. Hamas, which is believed to have taken around 150 Israeli hostages since Saturday, threatened to kill a captive each time Israel struck Gaza without warning. Hamas confirmed that two of its senior officials had been killed by strikes.

Israel approved the call-up of an additional 60,000 reservists, raising the total number mobilized so far to 360,000, the most in such a short period since the country’s founding. It is not yet clear if or when Israel will order a ground invasion of Gaza.

On the border: The scale of the horror unleashed on towns and villages near Gaza is coming into focus. In one kibbutz a mile and a half from Gaza, New York Times journalists saw more than a dozen bloated bodies lying on the ground and Israeli soldiers carrying slain residents. The Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of around 1,500 Palestinian assailants since Saturday morning, offering one of the first clear indications of the size of the assault.

The toll: In all, at least 1,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed in Israel. Health officials in Gaza said that 900 Palestinians have been killed, including 260 children, and 4,500 others have been wounded in the last four days, though it was unclear how many were civilians.

Diplomacy: The U.N.’s top human rights official condemned the “horrifying mass killings” and executions Palestinian armed groups are accused of committing. But he warned that Israel’s announcement of a “complete siege” of Gaza would exacerbate “already dire” conditions in the impoverished coastal enclave.

Video: Our Visual Investigations team looked at how an attack in Sderot, Israel, unfolded.

Country Garden’s City Mansions project in Nantong, China, last month. Qilai Shen for The New York Times

China’s real estate crisis claims another giant

The embattled property developer Country Garden, once China’s largest homebuilder, said yesterday that it was unable to repay a loan and expected to miss upcoming overseas debt payments.

The announcement is effectively a statement from Country Garden that it is likely to default, with roughly $187 billion in liabilities. Country Garden is one of the biggest casualties of China’s imploding real estate market, which has sent Evergrande, another giant property developer, into bankruptcy.

What’s next: The company said “its top operational priority” was to ensure the delivery of apartments it sold but has not yet built, which is also a priority for the Chinese government.

H5N1, a highly lethal version of a bird flu virus, has spread rapidly around the globe. Mariana Nedelcu/Reuters

Engineering a bird-flu-resistant chicken

Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study. The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be a tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of viruses that pose grave dangers to both animals and humans.

But there are potential risks, scientists said. Some breakthrough infections still occurred, and when the scientists edited just one chicken gene, the virus quickly adapted. That suggests that care must be taken to avoid driving further evolution of the virus, the study’s authors said.

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Asia Pacific

Monday’s attack appeared to be the deadliest single assault on civilians by Myanmar’s military junta in six months. Associated Press

Around the World

Nearly half of the assembly backed Russia, showing that it was not completely isolated. Bryan R. Smith/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Other Big Stories

A Morning Read

Radio remains the preferred medium for millions of Indians. Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

In Nuh, a rural district in Haryana, India, female literacy rates are among the lowest in the country, early marriages are common and violence against women is the norm.

But Alfaz-e-Mewat, a community radio station there, offers a mix of group therapy, education, women’s empowerment and entertainment. The station has helped shift attitudes toward women’s education and has been a voice for change.

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Tim Enthoven

Culture has come to a standstill

We are now almost a quarter of the way through what might be the least culturally innovative century in the past 500 years, my colleague Jason Farago argues.

Today’s culture is far less capable of change. Hollywood studios have hedged their bets with intellectual property. Even independent directors have stuck with narrative and visual techniques born in the 1960s. Furnish an apartment lately? Whether you’re shopping at Restoration Hardware or on Alibaba, you’re probably just buying replicas of European antiques.

But perhaps, Farago argues, what is required is letting go of the notion that good art is only good because it is innovative and ambitious. Who knows what might flower if we accepted and even embraced the end of stylistic progress.

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Cook this one-pan salmon Niçoise with orzo, which has the bright flavors of a salade Niçoise.

Listen to Drake’s new album, “For All the Dogs.”

Read “The Reign of Marvel Studios,” which captures how movies based on comic-book properties came to dominate pop culture.

Nourish you skin. Here’s how diet can affect it.

Play Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin

P.S. When two worlds — one dominated by the N.F.L. and the other by Taylor Swift — collided, so did culture and sports coverage at The Times.

We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at briefing@nytimes.com.

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